Summary of the Genius of Money for Chapter 9 &14 from part 1

Chapter 9

This chapter focuses on the relationship between money and death. It introduces the topic by focusing on a painting, the Dance of Death, portrayed by a German artist, Hans Holbein. The picture depicts a man sitting in a cell-like room with the wealth he accumulated his entire life. Next to him sits a skeleton, which represents the death itself.  The image aims at showing spectators human’s connection/relationship with money, death’s appearance, and the death process.

Greediness leads to people’s insatiable appetite for wealth so as to seek seemingly eternal security for themselves. However, it is the very same act that destructs their life because they are exposed vulnerably to variations due to the belief that that simply having money on their hands and/or in their safety box would ensure absolute security and save them from death. Death, in a sense, is no longer a biological transition that people undergo, but more accurately, a lessen that enlightens people so that they could be more sympathetic with their real needs and return balance to that human sense of well-being.

Chapter 14 
In this chapter, the author introduces two metaphors - labyrinth and touchstone - to illustrate the functionality of money in the modern society. Even though these two items seem far-fetched, the writer made a strong case by discovering the rule that they both connect the visible world and invisible world. Coincidentally, this particular trait also exhibits itself in the medium of money. Money expresses a social technology which makes the invisible visible by quantify the value of material goods. It is also linked to human’s material needs and participation in economic life, which can also be taken as a reference to the human experiences itself, a journey about self-exploration, similar to the purpose of labyrinth. 


Yet, money has changed in recent years and has become much less connected to the human experience as exemplified by the touchstone and the labyrinth. It has essentially jettisoned all physicality and been reduced to electronic forms such as credit cards and electronic purses.  As a result, money, as a medium of exchange, gradually loses its function of making the invisible visible. Touchstone is no longer needed to measure the quality of coins; the physical journey with the iconic exchange of paper money becomes extinct. However, the author argues, the essence of the labyrinth journey remains, but just chooses to manifest itself in a different form. Given that the moment of purchase could be almost simultaneous with the thought of the purchase in the human brain, the spiritual self - desires and needs - will be completely visible in the economic self that buys, sells, invests, and gives, which corresponds to an old saying that “we are what we do”.